Trash Can
by Lone Draco
Summary: RENT Fic "You notice details when you have nothing to do but count holes and befriend cockroaches" (markroger)


(Trash Can)  
  
By: Lone Draco  
  
Rating: PG  
  
AN: This one's for my current beta, Lillie. Thanks for your support and everything you do. Thanks for being my muse the past few days.  
  
This is my second Rent fic. Please review ^_^  
  
With no Further ado...  
  
(Trash Can)  
  
By: Lone Draco  
  
I've made friends with the cockroaches. I tried to name them once, bust soon discovered that, besides size, there is no particular way to tell cockroaches apart. But, no matter which cockroach I'm talking to, they always prove to be an interesting conversationalist. Not a lot of talking on their part, more listening with an insightful wave of an antenna here and there. Much easier to talk to than mark.  
  
Skinny Mark, beautiful little blonde Jewish boy so lost in his world of film he's convinced he can save a best friend who's already too far gone. It was only after many silent hours of watching him take care of me – making me tea, forcing me to down AZT, providing a seemingly endless supply of cereal...things only Mark would do – that I came to the mildly startling conclusion of just how beautiful he really was. Is. I've lost concept of time, forgotten the days, weeks and months (has it been years yet?) since Mimi died. I suppose it's close to Christmas, the loft is getting colder by the day and beautiful mark (as I now refer to him in my head) is burning more and more things to keep me warm.  
  
He keeps telling me to play my guitar, to at least tune the damn thing. As I look at it now I can almost see his concern. It's in a corner, half- hidden by the shadow of my mountain of dirty clothes, home to a few wolf- spiders and becoming the favorite resting place of dust and dirt in the Loft. I should play it sometime, to make Mark happy, play it simply to watch the silky cobwebs clinging to it dance to music we share. Watch the cobwebs dance with their wolfish partners in a tango that was stripped of me not once, but twice.  
  
Besides talking to my new insect friends (the cockroaches, not mark) I have found that counting the holes in our curtains provides me with ample amusement. Sometimes I wonder what I used to do to have fun, but I've spent so much time here forgetting that to remember is the equivalent of learning how to swim to then turn around and drown. Not pleasant to say the least. I get flickers sometimes – films, table dancing at some café, playing that dusty fender with passion, Collins, Angel, Santa Fe – but nothing seems to stay.  
  
I see a few things clearly, Mark and Mimi mostly. The times with Mark are still around because they're rarely bad – I haven't felt the need to train myself into forgetting them yet – and a few about Mimi I'm doing my best to erase. Soon as they have left me I'll try to live again I suppose, maybe remember those other things I forgot while forgetting her; something says they're important. That they made a large impact on who I am.  
  
Beautiful Mark is home now, though he looks and seems world-weary. He asks me how I'm doing, blue eyes that still care. They haven't turned to gray. I respond in my normal fashion; a language I concocted of grunts and nods that he seems to be fluent in. Sadly I'm proud of it. He tells me about his day, what he did, who he saw, how people I've forgotten are. I listen to him talk, not really focusing on content (content doesn't seem to matter anymore) but to the rise and fall in the pitch of his voice. I luxuriate in the comfort of his words as they sooth me.  
  
When Mark comes home things are in color again. It's all gray when he's gone. Gray walls, gray curtains with 210 holes, gray blankets, gray table; all that industrial, boring, sickening gray. Enter beautiful Mark with his color words, painting everything for me. It's not a reality painting – oh no – sometimes the table is pink and the curtains are lavender blue (I know they're gray) but it's more fun than the lack of black and white. Mark himself is color, navy and white scarf, blonde hair (dirty-blonde if you want to be precise) blue, blue eyes. You notice detail when you have nothing to do but count holes and befriend cockroaches.  
  
You notice how his glasses always fall down oh his nose when he laughs at his owns jokes, how his hands shake oh-so-slightly when he brings me my daily dose of cereal (sometimes its more potent than the AZT), how those eyes sparkle and his face lights up in a grin when I take my AZT without him reminding me. How he blushes when Maureen is on the phone. You notice (after hours of careful observation) how beautiful he is no matter what he's doing. Repitition also proves amusement to my state of mind. Makes everything easier to grasp.  
  
Beautiful Mark, Beautiful Mark, Beautiful Marl.  
  
- - -  
  
Mark Cohen closed the paper bound journal he had stumbled across when he walked in late that evening and tried to digest what he had just read. Beautiful Mark? Color-words? Though Roger had not resorted to heroin on this round of withdrawal it seemed his mind would not let him simply glide by in peace. It seemed keen on dragging him into insanity any ways.  
  
He sighed, running a hand through spiky blonde hair, glancing over to where his best friend slept, chest slowly rising and falling in a steady rhythm. Beautiful Mark? Roger's revelation played over and over in his mind, as Muzetta's waltz once had, a thought on endless loop and there was no sight of the shuffle or change-track buttons anywhere.  
  
Was Roger in lo... no, no he couldn't, wouldn't be. Roger was the "Ladies Man" personified, Sky Masterson of the 21st century. And if he remembered correctly Sky had never fallen for Nathan (1). And so it was to be assumed the same truth would hold true for the rugged, dark, handsome (if not slightly insane) musician and his scrawny, Jewish, filmmaking friend. Beautiful Mark...Beautiful Mark...Beautiful Mark. Never ending thought-loop in his mind. He was missing something, hew was sure of it. Beautiful Mark...  
  
"Roger," he whispered to the sleeping form, curled cat-like on the moth- eaten couch, "if anyone is beautiful, it's you" From the dust cushions a world-weary and battered musician smiled.  
  
Fin (maybe)  
  
EN: The end –maybe, I'll possibly continue this, most likely not though. Thank you for reading, please Review.  
  
(1) Nathan Detroit and Sky Masterson are both characters in the classic musical "Guys and Dolls". 


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